The-Dream

Community Grade
(2 Users)

Your Grade

It takes an awful lot of chutzpah to name your third album Love King, especially when your music is deeply rooted in the legacies of R&B kings like Prince, Michael Jackson, and R. Kelly (The-Dream’s last album even featured a tribute song called “Kelly’s 12 Play.”) But cockiness is a prerequisite for an R&B singer, and on Love King, writer-producer-songwriter The-Dream has the talent to back up his over-the-top swagger. The-Dream’s sound remains rooted in the synthesizer-heavy R&B of mid-’80s Prince, while his over-the-top raunchiness is indebted to Kelly’s cartoon sexuality. The difference is that The-Dream seems to understand the ridiculousness of songs with names like “Sex Intelligent,” “Panties To The Side,” and “Make-Up Bag,” which recommends the gift of expensive purses as the perfect way to get a girlfriend to forgive serial infidelity. Like Kelly, The-Dream is funny, but he’s intentionally amusing; there’s a winking quality to his horndog antics that never veers into outright irony. Love King is dreamy baby-making music monomaniacally obsessed with sex, but love, or at least lust, turns to hate on the infectious kiss-offs “Abyss” and the album-closing “Florida University.” (The chorus reduces the title to its initials.) Though The-Dream has established his own strong identity, Love King might just be the best Purple Rain follow-up Prince never made.